The Dancer

Alliance Francaise French Film Festival

7 March 2017 - 23 April 2017

French singer-actress Soko and ingénue-of-the-moment Lily-Rose Depp lead a star-studded cast in Stéphanie Di Giusto’s spectacularly mounted screen biography, inspired by the true story of two rival pioneers of modern dance and theatrical performance in late 19th-century Paris.

Nothing in her background destined Loïe Fuller (Soko), born in the American Midwest, to become the toast of the Belle Époque cabarets, or to perform at the Paris Opera. Yet with her revolutionary “Serpentine” dance she enthralled audiences and became the blazing symbol of a generation. Even as the physical effort risked destroying her back, she never faltered in the quest to perfect her art. But it was Loïe’s meeting with Isadora Duncan (Depp) – a beautiful young prodigy hungry for glory – that threatened everything: her stature, her confidence and her sanity.

With excellent support from Gaspard Ulliel, Mélanie Thierry, Louis-Do de Lencquesaing and François Damiens, this gorgeously realised debut charts the remarkable destiny of a woman ahead of her time, one who revolutionised her art to a degree that still astounds over a century later.